by Rachel Caine
"Lord, Evangelist, you a mess." The shadow stooped down, got a hand under John’s arm and lifted him to his feet. For the first time, John realized that the shadow was Sam, the one who’d met him at the bus, the one who’d shown him the room and Vivyan. "You drink it or take a bath in it?"
"Sam?"
"Sam I am." Sam’s teeth flashed white. "Read Seuss a long time ago, but it do stick with you. You up to walking, preacher-boy?"
Sam was holding something in his other hand, a square black case that John recognized with a shock. Sam saw him looking at it and held it out.
"Vivyan said you’d be missin’ this," Sam said.
It was his horn case. John opened it and settled his trumpet in the red velvet womb, carefully spread the square of cloth over it, and sat back on his heels, shaking.
"Where’d you find it?" he asked. Sam was silent until John looked up at him.
"Next to a dead man," he said. "Young kid, white. Seen him around. Think he played sax ‘round here. Some kind of heart attack, folks say. Maybe drugs."
John stood up, holding to his horn case like it was the only thing anchoring him to this earth.
"I need to talk to Vivyan," he said. Sam smiled.
"Expected you would."
Vivyan was wearing sun-bright yellow, sharp and hard on his whiskey eyes. He blinked back tears and stood in front of her, as dignified as he could be stinking of booze and failure. She sat down in her rocking chair with the baby on her lap. Sam took a seat not far away. There was no sign of Tante Marinette, not even a feather left to prove she’d been here.
John stood silently while Vivyan looked him up and down, then shook her head.
"Monter le tête," she said to Sam.
"Who rode my head?" John asked. She looked at him again, brown eyes wide. "Tante Marinette said that. She said something about Petro."
The baby fussed. Vivyan soothed it with a hand against its back, rocked it gently, and said, "Petro is the left-hand path of Vodun. Black magic. Tante Marinette knows this well. She walks both paths."
"What about you?"
Vivyan’s smile made dimples rise in her cheeks. "Erzulie is the loa of love and beauty, John the Evangelist. I follow her right-hand path in the Rada, not the Petro. But some call down the violent spirits. We live in a place close to that world."
"The bar – " He closed his eyes and remembered. "There were patterns drawn on the floor – "
"Veves," she said. "To invoke the loas. I know the place you went. A dark société, not for someone like you. The Carrefour opens the road, the Huntor plays to invoke the spirits. And sacrifices are made."
John thought about the young sax player, crying bloody tears, now lying dead.
"You made a sacrifice," Vivyan said. She opened her hand, and in it lay a gold necklace with a crescent moon, a fleck of white crystal for a star, a boat sailing beneath.
"I’m sorry."
"This wasn’t the sacrifice, it’s only a charm, freely given." She held it out to him, and he took it, settled it warm around his neck. The warmth seemed to sink deep into his muscles and wrap him in its embrace. "You made the sacrifice to the loa Carrefour. You know what it is?"
It came to him in a rush and made him dizzy and weak. He hadn’t seen Sam move, but the man was there, helping him to a chair, pressing a glass of water into his hand. The water tasted like brass and music, sweet on his tongue. It washed out the lingering trace of whiskey and despair.
"I gave him the music," he said. "Didn’t I?"
"Oui."
"How do I get it back?"
Vivyan sat very still, watching him. For the first time he realized that he was standing on a rug with pale white lines that looped back on each other in infinite scrolling circles. A blue rug, the color of the sea.
Veves.
"You go into darkness," she said to him. "I set my hand on you, Evangelist. You go into darkness, but you do not go alone. Wear the charm, and believe. There is power in your music, too."
"I can’t play."
She smiled. "Of course you can. Play for me."
He took out his trumpet and started with scales. C major. C sharp. D. D sharp. Up, up through the entire range of the instrument, the metal dead and unresponsive under his fingers, his lips clumsy and uncertain with the notes.
"Keep playing," she said when he stopped, sweating. He did.
After an hour of painfully slow progress, he began to feel the echoes of his gift, like whispers from a party miles away.
After four hours, he was playing. He didn’t stop. Sam left, and still he played, played until Vivyan’s warm hands closed over his from behind and her body pressed against his.
"You’ve come far," she whispered. "But you must come farther."
He turned toward her, saw sparks around her like circling suns, and terror spiked in him, then disappeared in a tide of wonder.
"How – " he breathed. She held up a hand that glowed like dawn, placed it against his lips and put the taste of light into his mouth.
"There are other kinds of music," she said, and began to show him the dance.
He had no trouble finding the bar. It stood waiting for him, and this time when he looked at the name over the entrance it shifted and blurred and changed until it read Petro.
John took hold of his horn case and went into the dark, smoky embrace of the left-hand path.
Carrefour was on stage, playing accordion; Huntor hammered the piano. A half-dead guitar player twitched and jerked with the music, and even though John couldn’t see it, he knew there were threads between the three of them, and those threads were blood-red.
He looked at the crowd with fresh eyes and saw that they were dancing to a purpose, tipping back rum like consecrations, dancing the veves inlaid in the floor. Dancing up the power, to welcome the loas.
Erzulie’s necklace hung heavy around his neck. He took a deep breath and tasted music, blood, rum, drugs, the violence lurking just out of sight in the smoke.
"Rum?" A waitress was at his elbow, tray ready. A glass already filled waited for him.
Liquor opens the doorways. That had been his last mistake.
He pushed past her and walked to the stairs, mounted the steps to the stage. The guitar player watched him with dull graying eyes, sucked empty of music and life, just conscious enough to be terrified and desperate.
John fitted the mouthpiece to his horn and began to play. Not the wild, powerful scream that poured out of Carrefour's accordion and Huntor’s piano.
He played Amazing Grace.
It was drowned in the roar of the wild music at first, but he kept playing, sweet and controlled, feeling his own power trickle back. Carrefour’s music tugged at him, demanded to be played, but he shaped each note, placed each accent as carefully as if he’d played in the crystal silence of a cathedral.
And though he blew no harder, the trumpet rang louder. When he opened his eyes he saw thin threads stretching from him out to Carrefour, thin threads of clear sky blue that pierced Carrefour like thrown knives. Carrefour turned, snarling. Nothing human in those eyes. Nothing sane. I can die, John thought. They can spill my blood to feed the loas.
He played. He had no real choice.
The guitar player stopped and slipped the strap of his instrument over his head. He dropped it with a discordant jangle of strings and staggered drunkenly off the stage. With luck, he’d make it. He’d live. He’d play again, someday, because music wasn’t a God-given talent, it was a God-given obsession.
John played louder. The sky-blue threads wrapped Carrefour tight, pinned his arms to his sides, made the accordion squeal into sudden silence. Huntor’s piano seemed tinny and lost, and then it faltered into silence.
John played Amazing Grace until it was the only music in the room, until he had taken all that he’d lost from Carrefour and Huntor and felt the power coiled inside him like white fire. Then he stopped, and the sky-blue threads binding Carrefour turned gray and faded, and the loa of the crossroads turned o
n him with claws outstretched to spill the offering blood.
Sam stepped in between. Carrefour’s eyes met Sam’s, and widened.
"Ogou!" he said.
Sam’s hand closed around his arm and held him still. "Brother," he rumbled. "Time to go home. Leave the dancers to dance. Renvoyer. Return the ti bon angle to this body and go to your place."
Carrefour bared his teeth in what was almost a smile, and said, "Blood and music, Ogou. Thick enough to taste in the air. Don’t say you aren’t tempted."
Ogou’s hand touched his forehead and pushed. "Renvoyer."
Carrefour’s body twitched and convulsed, a puppet on jerking strings. He fell to his knees.
When he looked up, his eyes were still blue, but they were confused.
They were human.
Sam turned and looked at John. After a moment, he held out his hand. John took it carefully, but it felt like a human hand. Stronger than his, but human.
"Keep playing, Evangelist," Sam said. "Maybe someday you learn to let the spirits in, oui?"
"Maybe," John said. "Mostly, I think my job will be to keep them out."
Sam smiled. "Not all of us," he said, and turned and walked away, straight out through the crowd, out into the street and the night.
Monter le tête, John thought. I had a saint with me tonight.
He saw Vivyan smiling from the back of the room, no loa in her now, just the woman. He took up his trumpet and began to play Basin Street Rag.
And he led the people out of the Petro, into the street, where the night was full of color and light and the possibilities of grace.
When he looked back – just the one glance – he saw the sign change again over the door. It no longer read Petro.
It read Closed.
Vivyan’s hand closed around his arm, warm and satin-soft.
He was home.